Audio Version Of The Blog – 12/12/24
Posted on December 12th, 2024
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Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 24
How Can We Sharpen Our Sensitivity to the Layers of the Heart?
In any field or subject, we can develop increasing sensitivity through contemplation, immersion, and habituation. In Shamati article number 7, “What Is, “A Habit Becomes a Second Nature,” in the Work?” Baal HaSulam states that we can feel anything that exists in reality exclusively via habit.
We can start sensing previously unfelt phenomena by exerting and working in them. What is exertion and work? It is that very prayer. Then, we develop this sensory system, delve deeper, and feel it. Other than working on this desire to receive, there is no other way.
In spirituality, there is only one solution: work on this desire through the upper light via a plea to the Creator, who responds to the plea and provides for this desire. The process is straightforward: appeal upward and receive a response from above. There is nothing more to it.
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I was no more than 26 years old at the time, but I knew very well that life had no purpose or meaning, that everything was a deception and illusion. The essence and outcome of a hard-labor life on Sakhalin Island is no different from a life in Nice. And the difference between Kant’s brain and a fly’s brain is insignificant. No one in this world is right or wrong, and everything is rubbish and nonsense, and so to hell with it! (Anton Chekhov, Lights)
Question: The 26-year-old Chekhov reached this conclusion after contemplating life. All his stories and writings would be written later. What do you think can make a young man conclude life is pointless and has no meaning?
Answer: This is what he saw around him, in himself, and in books probably. This was his resume at that moment.
Question: When pressed on all sides, a young person may come to have such an idea. Please tell me what the right way to respond to such a thought is.
Answer: The right way is to close your eyes and keep going with what is required of you.
Question: That is, not to send it to hell, but to keep going?
Answer: Well, this concerns everything in life.
Question: How do you determine what is required? How does he determine what is required of him? What does it mean?
Answer: There is an upper master who requires you to do a particular job. And since He belongs to a higher nature, He is undoubtedly smarter than you.
Question: So you should follow Him?
Answer: You have no choice but to submit.
Question: Chekhov compares life in Sakhalin with life in Nice. This is a new take. How can a person compare hard labor and stale bread in Sakhalin with life in Nice with calm, aromatic coffee in the morning, a croissant, and so on? How does one conclude that Sakhalin is the same as Nice?
Answer: Because, in general, there is no significant difference except for bodily comfort. And, in general, it is the same thing.
Comment: But we still live in this material world.
My Response: We take into account all our corporeal benefits. But if you do not account for it, but judge expressly by life itself, what difference does it make?
Question: Do you also think a hard, backbreaking life somewhere in Sakhalin is the same as in Nice?
Answer: Backbreaking, I do not think so.
Comment: Well, not necessarily backbreaking, but just living somewhere out there in the village versus in Nice is the same thing?
My Response: Yes.
Question: What parameters do you take into account when you say this?
Answer: I think that as long as I am alive, it makes no difference where I live. What do I really need in order to live? I can settle on any island.
Comment: A computer and a room.
Answer: Yes.
Question: Is this what it means that a person does not need much?
Answer: Actually yes.
Question: How can we say there is no significant difference between the brain of Kant and the brain of a fly?
Answer: Both are objects; they act purely on their egoistic motivation. Although Kant seems to be checking himself, studying himself, overall both he and the fly act the same way in choosing the greatest pleasure.
Question: How are we different then?
Answer: We are not.
Question: So why are we given reason?
Answer: To understand how to live, with or without reason.
Question: What does it mean to live with reason?
Answer: Living with reason is very difficult. I must study my actions, the forces that cause them, and think about them from the side: what I am right and wrong about.
Question: Is this the constant life of a person with reason? Is it so? Is this why it is difficult?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Where are we being led like this? What you just said was that we are being led, given pleasure.
Answer: We are being led to realize the meaning of life, which is in reaching the level of the Creator.
Question: Is this our whole journey?
Answer: Yes.
Question: In this case, the fly is not being led like that, right?
Answer: There is nowhere to lead the fly. It has no freewill, none of that.
Question: What does a fly live for?
Answer: The fly exists, like everything around us, except us humans, so that we can see how the world works and could be different from all creatures.
Question: What do you think about Chekhov’s conclusion that “no one in this world is right or at fault?”
Answer: He proceeds from the fact that everyone is born and exists within the laws of nature, in the nature that they have, that is given to them from above. Therefore a person is not responsible for himself and cannot strive for anything on his own.
Question: Meaning all his actions are involuntary?
Answer: Involuntary, yes.
Question: Is he neither right nor wrong?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Can one have such an attitude to life? Is this not a passive option?
Answer: It is passive.
Question: What is the correct attitude?
Answer: The correct attitude is to see that life is fiercely purposeful. It has meaning, and we must reveal this meaning and reveal it in such a way that it absolutely aligns with the law of nature. And the law of nature is “love your neighbor as yourself.” The law of human community.
Question: Is this what we always have to strive for?
Answer: Yes.
[334373]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 8/12/24
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Question: How can you feel the whole ten?
Answer: You cannot feel the ten as a whole unit. It happens only in extreme, borderline conditions. But you can try to imagine a ten that is above everything or is all concentrated in one point. You can imagine friends who embrace you and you embrace them, and this embrace is boundless.
You must feel it. Feel it!
[337679]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/28/24, Writings of Rabash “And Isaac Was Forty Years Old”
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Question: Where can one find love for the Creator?
Answer: Among friends. If you want to be together with them and to support them, then among them you will find your love for the Creator. Otherwise, you will not find it.
Question: What is love for the Creator?
Answer: That you must discover for yourself. Love for the Creator is revealed through the love for friends.
[337589]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/26/24, Writings of Rabash “Isaac Sowed in That Land”
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Question: Joy from faith above reason manifests itself when a person goes above his doubts and only relies on trust in the Creator. So I need to make even more efforts to distinguish where my joy comes from bestowal, and where it is simply comfort from my depictions?
Answer: We must always solve such problems where we do not know how to develop and how to answer them by increasing our aspiration, our effort. If I increase my efforts and feel joy, confidence, and strength, then I am on the right path.
Question: Why may an increase in aspiration not be felt as joy?
Answer: Because you increase your aspiration for the goal, but the goal in accordance with your aspiration does not come closer, and this makes you feel burdened.
Question: How can I keep joy while working for bestowal?
Answer: You need to accustom yourself to this slowly, gradually, in small portions.
[337440]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/22/24, Writings of Rabash “Joy that Comes from Dancing”
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Question: There are friends for whom you even feel love and before whom you are ready to annul yourself and to care for them. But there are also friends for whom you feel unfounded hatred that you do not understand. Where can you find the strength to cover this hatred with love?
Answer: Only by asking the Creator to show you that everything you feel toward anyone is aroused in you by Him, personally by Him.
And then you will see that the person has absolutely nothing to do with it. The Creator simply awakens such feelings in you toward this person in order to educate you.
Question: Sometimes during meetings in the ten we achieve some kind of unity, and in such moments, I feel love for a friend I used to hate. But then it passes. How can I hold on to this moment?
Answer: You do not need to hold on to anything! Just thank the Creator for replacing your hatred with love for that person, and ask Him to give you the same love for everyone in the ten, and then for everyone in the world. It does not matter who—ask for an equal attitude toward all.
[337018]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/19, “Questions and Answers”
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Question: How can one receive the Creator’s blessing and reach perfection in the relationships between a man and a woman who are engaged in Kabbalah?
Answer: I think that it does not necessarily have to be between a man and a woman. Between women, between men, it does not matter who and with whom. This is how we need to understand relationships in Kabbalah.
In principle, this is the same work; you just divide it into several parts. Try to combine all your requests into one, and then everything will work out perfectly.
[337318]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/19/24, Writings of Rabash “The Discernment of ‘In Everything’”
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Question: You said that in every movement coming from the Creator, we need to study whatever comes from Him. What does it mean that we see the Creator’s movements and study them?
Answer: We see how the Creator guides us. Maybe now we do not see it very consciously, but this is how it will be revealed to us. We must imagine that this work is not in us, but in the Creator who creates certain conditions around us and within us so that we move correctly toward the goal.
Question: We work with His manifestations. That is, does movement from His side cause some kind of reaction in us?
Answer: Absolutely, the Creator constantly makes changes and thus our qualities change, and what we see in front of us. This is how we move forward.
Question: When He influences me and reactions arise in me, which of them should I look at and what should I do with them?
Answer: They should all be directed in only one direction so that we unite with each other and unite with the Creator, and so that this global connection between us and the Creator would elevate us to the goal of creation.
[337549]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/25/24, Writings of Rabash “Generations”
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Question: What does it mean to be a partner with the Creator in the act of creation?
Answer: It means that through your efforts, you strive to achieve a connection among all the friends and then between them and the Creator.
Question: Can we say that the material level of the group’s unity fills our minds while the spiritual level of unity fills our hearts?
Answer: Yes, we can say that.
Question: When a person begins to work for the sake of bestowal, does he have any support other than faith?
Answer: He has no other support. Only the connection with the friends and faith in what he attains through that connection.
Question: In my inner work or in the group’s work, should there be no sense of humiliation?
Answer: Absolutely not! On the contrary, we should take pride in being engaged in the work of the Creator.
Question: What should we ask for to transform foolishness into holiness?
Answer: Ask for a proper, normal, and healthy connection among all the friends. This is the most important thing, and it will keep you on the right path.
[337537]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/25/24, Writings of Rabash “Generations”
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